Au Pair Lessons: Stay in Touch

I know that this seems pretty obvious and one of the things you’re positive you’ll keep up, but the best laid plans humans and furry rodents usually meet up with that road paved by good intentions. It’s not because you don’t care or they don’t care or you’ve moved on or any of those things. The biggest factor, really, is life and all those small, kind of pesky things that you didn’t really count on or told yourself wouldn’t be a factor. And then BAM! they were. 

I’m an eight hour time difference from my family. Yes, it could be a lot more. However, eight hours is also a third of the day. So when they’re waking up, I’m heading into late afternoon. (This is assuming my family stays my family and wakes up around 8am.) When they’re hitting lunch time, I’m getting ready for dinner and if they’re entering early afternoon, I should probably be thinking about heading to bed. Which means that I generally don’t Skype them during the week and that, during the weekend, it has to be planned, at least a little bit, so that we’re all kind of functioning.

The same goes with me and my friends. With my friends in Canada, it’s anywhere between six and nine hours worth of difference, with work and commitments thrown in there and actually getting to sit down and talk ends up happening not as often as we would like. But we make it happen. We keep each other updated on when and what times work and either try and wake up or try and stay up so that we can get that face to face time that’s really important.

It keeps you (me) sane. These are all people that know me and don’t need me to explain different things, they understand where I’m coming from, what my likes and dislikes are and I need that familiarity when a lot of things are unfamiliar.

However, when Skyping doesn’t always work (my sisters are both at university with fairly heavy course loads and we really don’t get to Skype unless they’re at home visiting), mail is amazing. No, it’s not that face-to-face that Skype gives, however: it’s personal. Think about it: someone had to buy a card or a postcard or dig out a piece of paper. They had to sit down and write so that a human being that is not them could read it. They had to find an envelope, buy a stamp, dig up your address and then not forget to stick it in the mail. That’s pretty personal. That’s someone taking the time and stopping to really think about you. And who doesn’t love finding something that isn’t a bill or an advertisement or a flyer in their mailbox?

On top of that, with most people having smartphones these days, WhatsApp is a great idea to download. You can send texts and photos and all those other things that you do with regular texting, but it doesn’t charge you international fees that going through your provider would.

Meeting new people and doing new things and all those ‘new’ bits that come with being somewhere different are great, but it’s also super important to keep in touch with those people who understand why, exactly, it is that a particular thing annoys you or what fascinates you about that museum or tell you that, yes, they will put together a fund to help you come home during one of those ridiculously hard weeks everyone goes through. They’ll keep you sane, so keep it touch.

 

Things I’m Loving:

+ This soup – (Because fall + soup go together like me + mushrooms.)
+ This playlist – (Just to have in case you need it this week.)
+ These DIYs – (My future home will be globe and map themed.)
+ Just for fun – (Who do you share your birthday with?)